This week's letters and blog pingbacks in full

We get far more letters and blog pingbacks than we have room to print each week. Here's the full text of those we chose from. The big issues: Xbox 360s showing the "red ring of death" and MBS's porn billing software. You didn't like either...

My favourite comment seen on the web re the Xbox: "Blue screen of death, red ring of death.. isn't it about time that Microsoft stopped putting these 'of death' features into its products?"

WHICH LAPTOP PER CHILD? I thought it somewhat ironic that the article 'Which Laptop per child' only mentioned the OLPC initiative in the context of 'developing countries'. It appeared to assume that every child in the UK has easy, if not constant, access to a computer. Hello big IT business! There is still a large digital divide out there and large multinationals need to have this pointed out. Seven years ago my school was part of the Microsoft Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) initiative which itself aimed at OLPC. This brought laptop manufacturers and suppliers together with finance houses to enable parents to pay for laptops by instalments. Surprise, surprise, this still only reached relatively prosperous parents who were creditworthy. As a result, my school pioneered the 'E-Learning Foundation' concept which became a model for others. Once again parents needed to make contributions, but this time voluntary ones to the whole scheme and could thus access Gift Aid for the Foundation due to its charitable status. This helped another stratification of parent, but it still did not reach the poorest and hardest to reach. AAL in my school died a death because even with outside funding it was not financially sustainable. With the advent of cheaper PCs, some parents opted for these and thus cut themselves off from school (many of these machines were used for gaming rather than for education). Organisations such as 'Tools for Schools' have provided ex-industry PCs and laptops for poorer children, but the spec often leaves much to be desired, particularly when there is an increasing need for multimedia from the internet. The digital divide is actually getting worse if one takes into account the increasing importance of access to broadband services. Many of my parents do not have landlines and just operate with cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phones (36% are in receipt of free school meals). Our latest project is attempting to overcome all these difficulties by providing a community broadband wireless network with the school being the service provider. Cheap PCs are to be installed in homes linked to the schools learning platform, which itself can access the web in a safe way. Parents will still need to make contributions, but these can be less than £5 a week for everything. Even with this sort of initiative, not all parents will come on board. We need even more creative solutions to give every child equality of opportunity. After all, children spend 85% of their waking hours in their own community. The government keeps saying that the lynchpin to a meritocracy is a good quality education for all. How can this occur if OLPC is still out of reach? Many of our deprived areas have similar challenges to those found in the developing world. So, Nicholas Negroponte and Craig Barrett, what are you going to do about the iniquitous and inequitable situation found just below your benevolent noses? David Dixon, Head Teacher Bowbridge Primary School

The article misses the key issue, which is that the OLPC laptop is, from beginning to end, designed for children and designed to be an educational instrument. It is definitely not designed to be a simple cheap laptop whose basic purpose is to teach children to run Microsoft Office. Thus the OLPC laptop is ruggedised to withstand serious drops, water spills, heat, dust, high humidity and to operate in extreme climates. It is specifically designed to withstand the abuse a nine-year-old child is bound to give it. For every OLPC machine returned for repair or disposal, there would be 50 times as many Intel machines. The OLPC machine can be read in sunlight outdoors, where many children have classes or study; not so the Intel device. The OLPC machine can operate in energy-saving black and white as well as colour, can be used as an e-book by swivelling the screen, and is equipped, uniquely, with mesh networking so all children in a village are networked with each other automatically, as well as with their school, and if one child is on the net, they all are. The OLPC machines have security features which may be the best in the world. None of this obtains with the Intel computer. The purpose of the OLPC machine is to allow children to learn to learn with their laptop, both by accessing educational material on the machine itself, on the school server (also being specified by OLPC), and on the internet. Children who had access to a teacher only sporadically, who have no school books (or one to a class) in climates where books disintegrate will be able to access all the information in the world from a village with only intermittent electricity, and when that fails will be able to recharge the batteries themselves. The Intel machine cannot do any of that. For the first time in human history, children with no access to information and education will be able on their own initiative to access everything. The power of a village child being able to look up a subject important to him on, say, Wikipedia is unimaginable. The truth about Intel came out in Mr. Barrett's outburst on 60 Minutes when he was confronted with his own letter to the government of Nigeria attacking the OLPC machine, and said that's the way business worked. Intel sees this all as a business. OLPC sees it as an educational project, and education being the only way to lift children in incredibly under-developed areas out of poverty. To OLPC, this is a humanitarian project passionately pursued with the commitment to reduce cost to nations as scale delivers savings. Barrett sees it as a business plan. In the end, Intel vs. AMD is all immaterial, as I am sure OLPC would agree. They key is education, and OLPC has that, and only that, in its DNA. The Intel machine has nothing more than a Wintel ambition to protect the margins of its user base. Jerry Goldstein, Kolonaki, Greece

>> Unfortunately it does seem that Intel is making this a competitive market, but if Mr. Negroponte's beliefs were truly "humanitarian", why wouldn't he welcome the opportunity to bring the best computer to the children who need them most? Just because the OLPC was the first doesn't mean it has to be the last. http://bungatech.com/2007/05/31/is-olpc-competition-ethical/

DEAD XBOXES I am currently teaching students on a game design course and most of them have bought an Xbox 360. I cannot begin to tell you the number of them that have told me the XBox 360 has frozen or given the red light. To me it seems nearly all of them. Many of them were hesitant of getting an XBox 360 to begin with but with waiting so long for PS3 and Nintendo Wii they felt they could not hold out no longer and took the plunge. However many of them regret it not in the games that are out for the XBox 360 but the fact that they are waiting for it to freeze or crash in the middle of playing a game. I myself own all three next-generation consoles and I can tell you that I have never had the PS3 or Nintendo Wii freeze or crash on me even when left on for hours on end. If I was to do that with the XBox 360 I was almost always expecting a crash or a failure... overheating perhaps?? It's a shame really because the console has many good games and publishers on board; it's just the hardware that seems to be a little unreliable. I wonder what's going to happen when my students and myself are in the middle of playing HALO 3? Jose Cole, London

Check out my clansite at http://www.dutchghosts.nl - on the left side you will see 360 failure stats amongst my clan members. At the moment, 16 failed on 41 owned. Evert van Brummelen (aka Max Qubit), The Netherlands

I bought my Xbox 360 in March of 2006, thinking that the faulty architecture of the console would have already been fix or modified after observing the failure rate on the launch units. But, oh, I was so wrong. Since then, my Xbox 360 has given me the red ring of death twice and I decided to sell it on eBay after experiencing how the DRM prevented me from playing my Xbox Live Arcade games unless I was logged on. And considering that the Wi-Fi adapter is a whooping $100 + tax, I rather move my modem around every time I feel like downloading a new game or playing online with others. And please note that the Nintendo DS has a Wi-Fi adapter built in and it only costs $130 and the PSP is $169 and can even surf the web. I'm not saying this will be my last MS console, but I will most likely wait until MS makes the changes necessary to make the console more reliable, quieter, and most definitely cheaper. Oscar Millan, El Paso, Texas

I work in the video game market and I for one dread selling a $500 machine that will potentially stop working within a couple of months. I know of one customer who has gone through 14 XB360 systems, and WHY is this happening 18 months after the launch?? This is such a HUGE problem, isn't there a Electronic Quality Control branch in the government that is supposed to monitor these issues. [No - Technology Ed.] What is the legal defective percentage you're allowed? I believe Microsoft's ignorance for letting these issues persist should cost them a large scale recall on the XB360. I know Sony has come under fire for the high price tag of the PS3 but at least you're buying quality not crap. Jesse Connell, Vancouver, Canada

I suspect the real cause of failing Xbox 360s is twofold. Dumb users combined with a slightly more sensitive console. I own a 360, I bought it on launch day in 2005 and haven't had any trouble with it since. This is because I keep it in a well ventilated and cool area. Most of my game machines run on wire racks and even hardware notorious for failure (such as the original 1995 Playstation) still run fine to this day. If, on the other hand, you have a user who takes the 360 and sets it up in a stuffy entertainment centre it will overheat, as any other bit of electronics would likely do, and fail. The problem then comes when the user has a repaired machine. What do they do with it? They put it right back in the stuffy entertainment centre that killed their first one. Surprise, surprise. Machine #2 fails. Lather, rinse, repeat and you get 5, 6, 7 replaced units. You can blame Microsoft if you want for making a finicky machine, but the real fault is of the users who try the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Jordan Lund, Portland, Oregon

I bought my XBox on the first day of launch, had no problems with it up until a week today, I had heard that the XBoxes that were issued on launch day were not up to scratch, and were overheating, having the 'red ring of death', etc. I didn't listen as mine was working fine with no problems - until last week, when I turned on my XBox, and in front of my eyes was the 'red ring of death', Straight away I went on the XBox website to see what was happening with my console. It didn't give much information, only saying - and I quote - "This behaviour occurs when the Xbox 360 console experiences a hardware failure", so I carried on reading but it only gave scenarios for if the power supply is red, orange or not illuminated, mine was on GREEN, but didn't say anything about this, so I decided to phone them, I told them the problem that I have 3 red lights on the front of my XBox, straight away he told me that there was a hardware failure with my console, and he also noticed by taking my serial number that I had owned it for 18 months, so he told me he would arrange for a rep from Microsoft to come and collect my XBox take it away, fix it, give a one-year warranty. Bargain, I thought, so I asked if I could proceed with it. Then he told me I had to pay £86 first. I asked why: he told me because my warranty had run out I have to pay. This I was not happy with. So I asked him questions about the 'red ring of death', asking if it was true that the XBoxes that were issued on launch day were not up to scratch as the XBoxes being released now. He told me it could be true and it could be a rumour, I asked if it was true, why didn't you recall the XBoxes that were sold, he then said we didn't recall them as it could be a rumour. Now I was getting angry because he was not being honest with me and sounded like they were just after getting as much money as possible by issuing faulty console systems, and not admitting it was their fault. I said I was going to pay for a fault to be fixed, that should not of happened in the first place, he then told me which made me more angry.....you will have to buy another XBox then. i find that Microsoft are not looking after their customers properly, I will be sending a letter of complaint to Microsoft about the attitude I had off the phone rep. i am also trying to find people this has happened to who have also bought them on launch day. Kristian Salter, Port Talbot

At last! Someone in the mainstream press giving Microsoft a hard time about the reliability of their Xbox 360 console. I myself have had 5 machines now (and the latest isn't sounding too healthy) and when the warranty is gone I won't be replacing it. By far the worst piece of consumer hardware of recent times in terms of reliability. What makes it even more galling is how brazen Microsoft are in sweeping it under the carpet. I direct you towards some communities on the internet that have had multiple failures : http://tinyurl.com/2xgcfl (NTSC-uk, one of the largest communities currently collecting info from all of its members about 360 hardware failure rates) http://tinyurl.com/2mg63h (rllmuk forum) http://tinyurl.com/238zfk (NeoGAF, American-centric, but shows that it's a worldwide fault) These three sites represent the tip of the iceberg in relation to the amount of faults that the 360 incurs. I'm delighted that you are bringing this to a wider audience so they do not suffer a similar fate to those of us who have bought a 360 already. Please, keep on applying the pressure on Microsoft by keeping this issue alive so they are forced to change the specification or at least admit the problems the console has. Keith Murray, Haddington

Well, I would hazard a guess at between 25% and 35% of all consoles... A straw poll at work, 17 people who own a 360, only three of these people are on their original console. (One admitted it does not get a huge amount of use). Four of these people are on their third console, and one is on her fourth.. Not good, and pretty surprising that Microsoft don't want to disclose failure rates... I do wonder how many of the 10 million 360's shipped, are actually replacements for failed units??? Mark Gillespie (no post town given)

I am now on my 3rd Xbox, which crashed the day after I bought Crackdown to play the Halo 3 beta. I am lucky enough to still have a warranty and feel for those who don't. They have me by the balls because I have spent too much money on peripherals that are too expensive. I wish someone with some clout would make enough noise to get the word out to the possible customers so they could make better buying decisions. Like a PS3, mine works like a charm. Thank you Sony for making a product that works and is actually worth the money. If you add the money for the warranties and the repairs of my crapbox 360, I have paid more for it than my $600 Playstation. Lucas Key, Springfield, Missouri

I was one of the lucky ones who managed to pick up a 360 when they very first came out in the UK. Mine has recently gone (I've had to endure it freezing on games for months prior to the red light thing) and I've had to send it back to Microsoft to get repaired. From what I hear I'm not alone – most of my friend's consoles have also had dreaded "Red Ring" lights over the last 6 months. What particularly frustrates me is Microsoft only have a years warranty on brand new machines anyway, and so are charging me over £80 (nearly a third of the cost of the machine) to repair it and send it back to me: they can't even guarantee I'll get a new box, someone will just tinker with it then I have to hope for the best with a new one year guarantee. It's abysmal from Microsoft - but then again, with their track record should I be surprised? I'd wager, the PS3 – although obviously more expensive – it far better put together and won't have these appalling recall rates. Once the decent titles start emerging, I know who I'll be giving my money to in future. Richard Massheder, York

Nov 2006 I bought my first 360 from Virgin Megastore in Croydon. From buying it, it always gave red rings and refused to boot, but the original Xbox used to crash quite often so I never worried about it too much. After five weeks however, it got to a stage where I would have to switch it on and off five or six times to get it to work. I had it exchanged by Virgin after five weeks. In Jan 07 I bought my daughter a 360 with Gears of War from Blockbuster Video so we could play together online. This had a smashed USB cover on the fascia on unpacking it. They exchanged the unit the following weekend. After 6 days use my daughters replacement 360 started to misread disks, coming up with an error "disk unreadable, try cleaning your disk" the disk would work fine in my unit, and my disks would not read on hers. I called Blockbuster telling them the problem saying I would like an exchange. They refused to exchange but they did refund my money. We drove from Blockbuster to PC World in Croydon and bought a new unit. Got it home and it was DOA, red ring of death. If you removed the hard drive it worked. I took it back to PC World the following night and they exchanged it for a new one (my daughters 4th unit in less than 2 weeks) Up until now this is still working. In March my unit then died, it was less than three months old. Red ring of death, it looked to be a power-based problem. At this point I cheated, I took my unit back to PC World and got it exchanged for a new unit. All in all we have had SEVEN Xbox 360 units (all brand new and boxed) since November 2006. My daughter and I now have PS3's and the hope is that once the games have started coming out, we'll swap to this as our console of choice. Microsoft's quality control is dreadful, their support is rubbish also. Try ringing their support line and I bet you, you will find it hard to talk to someone that has any clue about what they are talking about, and even though I call the UK helpline all 9 calls that I have made have been answered by an Eastern European, 5 of which were so hard to understand I gave up as you would have to repeat everything constantly and then they still didn't grasp what your problem was. We have met many people on Xbox Live, one youngster, who defends MS avidly has had his Xbox repaired 6 times, he has had his 360 just over a year. His last repair lasted 3 weeks before it failed again with RROD. Barry Barton (no post town given)

My Xbox 360 failed after only 20 hours use. Microsoft accepts that the usage was that low but flatly refuses to help me as the low usage ran beyond the warranty period. Microsoft do not have a systemic problem with the XBox 360, all the complaints are on another planet to them as they are so big they do not need customers anyway. How many corporations have made these fatal mistakes before ? When will they ever learn to respect the customers and treat them as equals ? Buy another Microsoft product? Not if I can help it. Maybe the ante-Trust cases in the USA had more merit than I previously imagined ? John Parsons, Berkhamsted

I have an XBox 360 that I have owned since February 2006. It has worked fine ever since I have owned it. I do not play it for extended hours every day. I have used it most days for a couple of hours and sometimes for longer, so, pretty average use. I know several (about 5 or 6) people personally who have not had a problem at all including myself. One of my friends had the three red LED's of death and had his console replaced. Unfortunately I think it must have had something to do with the hard drive connection or something as when he got a replacement it also did not work. I think the issue here is that quite a lot of people have 2 problems 1) not understanding enough about complexity of the device 2) jumping on the band wagon. Many of the posts you see in forums are sensationalised with swearing and blatantly angry children/teens. This is a high end powerful piece of technology that is often considered to be just a toy. The people posting on the forums or answering to questionnaires often can't spell let alone be considered to have treated a device like this sensibly? Imagine what would happen to a very high end PC if it was let loose in a room with some these excitable screaming infants! It needs to be considered in the same way, people have console squashed in under their TV with the power supply, sky box, dvd player, video recorder, PS2, Wii, Gamecube etc and a nest of cables. Why do the people that have a broken console seem to have more than one and the people I know (all around the 20-29, relatively sensible and reasonably mature) have not had a broken console. I think it is most definitely down to respect and careful usage. My younger brother has had his console since early Jan 2006 and he is a heavy user his console is almost always on. Either gaming streaming media or in Media centre. When you add statements to your story such as 2000 posts on a forum thread it makes it seem like there are 2000 posters and of course this is the intent but there are probably at worst 200-300 individual posters in a thread like that. Obviously I have no basis for that but just as much as to assume they are all individuals. Even if there were 2000 posters this is a very small percentage of consoles compared to how many have been sold. 5% of 10 million is 500,000 units I really doubt there are more than that I think the difference is the internet presence. Neil Andrew, Portsmouth

FIBRE NOT COPPER You quote someone in the industry saying that at present there is "no financially credible application today that wants, needs or can even use 24Mb". At a Global Telecoms Business conference in April I asked our delegates - about 80 very senior executives from telecoms operators across Europe - what bandwidth they had at home now and what they expected to have in 2012. Today they have pretty much what all of us have - from 1-2Mb up to about 8Mb, though a few had 12Mb or more. The overwhelming consensus was that in 2012 they would have around 150Mb, though a few expected more. Five years isn't long to reinvest in the infrastructure. Alan Burkitt-Gray, Editor, Global Telecoms Business

WEB LYRICS When you mention "digital media giant Gracenote", you perhaps should have mentioned the pertinent fact that Gracenote itself originated as cddb.org, a user-generated content index of CD track lengths to CD titles, which was then commercialised in 2001, taking with it the user-generated database. That disgruntled many people who had helped to build up the index voluntarily. (e.g. http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/boards/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001250.html) Mike Whittaker, Stapleton

>> Now admittedly this product in this instance - the lyrics - do belong to the artists who penned them and haven't been altered, transformed or used in a derivative way by the people hosting them on websites, for the most part. But... I find it oddly mercenary, though not surprising. http://community.livejournal.com/life_wo_fanlib/24585.html

MICRO BILL SYSTEMS CONT'D It says a lot about MBS' business that the only companies prepared to use their software are pornographers. Yoav Tzabar, Houghton

Let's face it, the whole approach of these companies is little more than demanding money with menaces. They know full well the problems that popups can cause, as well the fact that many people lack the knowledge to remove the software themselves. Add to that they know that many people won't want to complain for fear of being branded as some sort of internet pervert - especially if someone else has put the software onto the PC. Let them try to sue, they won't but I urge people to tell them where to go and invest in some antispyware software/antivirus software. AVG is a good one and free as well to download - as companies like this tend to drop all sorts of nasty things onto ones hard drive. 'FIDOTHEDOG" (no name or post town given)

I had the MBS software load itself onto my Windows machine recently without any request from myself, and it took a lot of time to get rid of it. I do NOT have a firewall in use. I never type info into panels requesting my details. Certainly not email address nor credit card numbers. Any respectable software comes with uninstall facilities. If the uninstall is used then programmes are removed, though usually leaving a passive record of the event. MBS software comes with no such facility. I had the greatest difficulty removing it from my computer because their main executables, mbsrm32.exe and mbssm32.exe files, loaded into \windows\system32 directory cannot be deleted whilst Windows is running. It is necessary to reboot the machine into DOS to facilitate this. There are other files in the \windows\prefetch directory that apparently reconnect to their website and reload the above deleted files. So these files also have to be deleted. There are also various entries in the registry, and possibly these also reconnect to the website. These also should be deleted. Not so easy. Theoretically, by using the System Restore of Windows XP (or later), to a date before the MBS software was loaded, it should be possible to eliminate all the contaminating files. I did not try this, but I would not put it past MBS that their software is designed to even overcome this procedure! You are right that Symantec does not identify the MBS programmes. This type of software, if not illegal (which I accept may well be the case), should at least be identified as the worst type of spyware. It would be interesting to see if an unwilling recipient of this software sued Micro Bill for criminal damage to their computer because of involuntary loading of it. They might win, were they brave enough to try it! Charles Brown [address withheld by request]

Having read your latest piece, the only point you have not investigated is this: if my friend comes over to my house once a year and during their latest visit I find that they have some how put this bill on my computer, they are responsible. When someone else has put it on your computer by accident or by subscribing what has it got to do with you. When you subscribe to anything else you give name, address etc. This is obviously a scam, I know for a fact that I never went on any porn site and would be willing to let someone have my computer for the day. I have deleted it now but have been reading in forums that some people have paid and this has just spurred MBS on to blocking their computer the next time and not stopping the subscription as they know they will pay. This must be the only place in the world that sends you bills and does not know even your name! This can't be right! Jason De Luca (no post town given)

AGE SHALL WITHER I'm confused. I've never heard of "Charted: Drake's Progress". Neither have Lucas Arts. Or Google. Perhaps you mean Sony/Naughty Dog's new game, "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune"? If so, you can find out more about it here: http://www.us.playstation.com/Uncharted/ Perhaps you might want to do that, when you're writing an article. Research, that is. Rather than listening into a conversation about "cool new games" between some kids at the bus stop. Alex Short, Canterbury

GOOGLE MAPS VS OS Perhaps Google Maps is cheaper than OS because it's a third rate product. For example it has always been a mapmakers convention reflect the size and importance of a town. Google completely ignores this, indeed sometimes reverses it. At one scale, Edinburgh disappears, the north east is represented by Hartlepool and Northampton is capital of much of the East Midlands. Zoom in a bit and places like Exmouth and Woking appear, but no Canterbury or Dover. Further in still and we see Fulham in big type as London's twin city, with a few random names - South Oxhey anyone? - to represent the rest of suburbia. And so it goes on. Hampton Wick in big type but where's Kingston? For some reason a random selection of golf clubs is given prominence, but a street level there's no schools, hospitals, pubs or railway stations. Google Maps is fine if all you need to find is a street, but even then there is no indication of the way house numbers go. For anything else it's pretty hopeless and you are better off buying a proper product, like an OS map. Nick Davies, Coulsdon

>> OK, I wouldn't use Google data for measurement and there is no info about source, quality, accuracy or date which are vital if you need to use the mapping for legal reasons. But for showing where schools are, or where the local library is - why not? There will always be a place for reliable and accurate data. Ordnance Survey data will not be lost to the nation (as it were) but I believe the two can co-exist. http://geomaticsruth.blogspot.com/2007/06/funny-that.html

3GB LIMIT Your correspondent Scott Colvey wrote in today's Technology Guardian that 32-bit systems are limited to a maximum addressable memory of 4GB and adds that the last 1GB is unusable not just under Microsoft OSs but also under Linux. That simply isn't true; Linux can make use of up to 64GB on a 32-bit system. While it's true that individual processes can only address 4GB, there can by many processes running concurrently. If more than 4GB are installed, then it uses "Physical Address Extension" (see, e.g. the Wikipedia entry) to address up to 64GB. Robert Harris, London

TAXING PROBLEMS I too attempted to renew my road tax via the DVLA web-site, as exhorted by the renewal reminder. I got to the payment page; it froze and I gave up in disgust. Rather than ask for more examples of failure, perhaps we could hear from anyone who has succeeded. Catherine Mowat, London

DAB REDUX DAB radios may not deliver signals acceptable to audiophiles, but in this part of hilly North London, with poor FM signals to begin with and a plethora of pirate stations making FM radio at times unlistenable, my 3 DAB radios perform sterling service in delivering the radio I want to listen to at perfectly acceptable standards of quality for a table radio with a 5" speaker. Paul Soper, London

SPAM REDUX Guardian Technology has run one or two defeatist articles in the past year that basically said there is nothing that can be done by the industry about spam. I am plagued with about a dozen spam emails every day. Not too bad, but presumably held down by a combination of my anti-spam software and my ISP. There is a solution. Every email could be charged at, say 2 pence (or 2¢), to send. One penny cold be kept by "the system" to pay for administration costs and 1p could be passed onto the recipient. Micro payment systems exist. The internet / communications industry is entirely capable of devising and administrating such a system and users would not object - if it were administered fairly. That is perhaps the biggest potential objection, that the industry would treat it as an opportunity to gouge more profits. Businesses who use email legitimately would not object because they could reduce their costs of processing junk mail. Legitimate personal users would not be penalised by such low costs, especially if they received something of the order of half their costs back when they receive email. Surely this approach would effectively drive spammers out of business. John White, Richmond [Unworkable, unfeasible and ignores all the failures of previous anti-spam efforts. We recommend reading the linked article - Technology Ed.]